Rural broadband program aims to bring 300 communities up to speed

WAKEFIELD, Que. — The federal government’s new rural broadband program will focus on making high-speed connections, as opposed to simply forging Internet connections for rural and remote communities, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains said Thursday, in announcing some of the long-awaited details to the Liberal commitment outlined in this spring’s budget. The new program, which will operate under the name Connect to Innovate, picks up where the previous government’s Connecting Canadians program left off, with $500 million through 2021 to improve the Internet connections in 300 communities across the country. The government is focused on “investments to really provide businesses and households the ability to have higher speeds and higher connectivity so they can get the data they need so they can run their businesses, for example, so they can get a good quality education; it really impacts their lives,” Bains told reporters after announcing the new program parameters in the Wakefield, Que., library. The program will primarily support, on a cost-sharing basis, what Bains called the “digital highway,” the middle-mile backbone infrastructure, with an emphasis on fibre, “because the idea is we want to increase the speed and capacity, and fibre connectivity is a key part,” he said. Some of the program’s funds will also be allocated to create last-mile connections for households and businesses that don’t have access to speeds of at least 5 Mbps. The new program keeps the previous government’s high-speed threshold of a 5 Mbps download speed, though Bains said he “must confess that’s very, very slow. It’s the bare, bare minimum.” Bains added: “We are now in 2016, there are many Canadians who need much higher speeds, a much better response rate. That’s why we’re focused on broadband connectivity — so once you get that fibre-to-the-institute, fibre-to-the-home, hopefully that speed will increase enormously, and be 10 times, potentially, faster than that.” John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, noted in a phone interview the low speed and highlighted the CRTC’s basic services proceeding during which some said that a 5 Mbps target was outdated, while others called it sufficient for a basic service. During the public hearing in the spring, northern Internet Service Providers (ISPs) said that setting minimum speeds was less important than having resources to build backbone infrastructure. According to the program’s website, 1 Gbps is the threshold for funding new, or upgrading existing, backbone connections. The focus on the middle mile is a course correction from the previous program, Stuart Jack, a partner at Nordicity, said in a phone interview. “I think they’ve got it right in terms of enabling more middle-mile investment, bringing fibre into the town and then letting various service suppliers compete within the town itself,” Jack said. “From an economics point of view, of how do you enable competition best with public investment, that’s probably the right balance.” In an email statement, Rogers Communications Inc. spokesman Andrew Garas said the company is “pleased to see the government’s investment in connecting the remaining Canadians who don’t yet have access to high speed Internet and we look forward to reviewing the program details.” Looking ahead to next week when the CRTC unveils its decision from the basic service hearing, the federal program will serve as a “helpful stop-gap measure for access” until the implications of that decision are fully meted out, Lawford said, adding that overall the program was positive, though not the whole solution. “Consider the climate four years ago,” Lawford said of broadband in Canada. “It was a complete wasteland… We’ve come a long way.” In a press release, advocacy group OpenMedia said any investment is welcome, but that the country needs a “comprehensive National Broadband Strategy to ensure rural and remote Canadians can catch up.” Connect to Innovate is open to any entity aside from individuals and other federal bodies. Where Connecting Canadians initially set a goal of connecting 280,000 households, the new program doesn’t have such a target, focusing instead on hitting 300 out of the 1,600 communities the department has identified as eligible for new backbone funding. “But I’m confident that our objective right now is to get that fibre-to-the-institute, fibre to the communities. And in some cases, we might focus on the last mile, in other cases, once we get it there, that’s significant enough to do the hub-and-spoke model which will allow that connectivity to go to different homes,” Bains said of the variable number of households Connect to Innovate will affect. More than 250 stakeholders were consulted while putting together the program, Bains said at the announcement, which was attended by nearly a dozen Liberal MPs who represent rural ridings. The consultation led to creating a flexible model, said Bains, though he noted that satellite-dependent communities still face challenges. “The minute we receive the proposals, we’re going to be evaluating them and getting the money out quickly. It’s really, really important,” he said, adding that “there’s many communities that are reliant on satellite, for example, for Internet connectivity and there’s capacity issues. So we’re very mindful that we have to act very soon.” Applications will be accepted from Jan. 16 to March 13. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Rural broadband program aims to bring 300 communities up to speed

News | December 15, 2016

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Rural broadband program aims to bring 300 communities up to speed

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